The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Recruitment
“Before there was Generative AI, there was AI.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek statement I’ve made over the past year and a half in an effort to slow the frenzy and ground us in the reality that AI, the regular, non-generative kind, has been automating tasks and transforming industries for years. In my role as the head of Radancy Labs, I keep a regular pulse on the world of work, talent acquisition and how macro-forces, such as advancements in technology, play a role in shaping the hiring process.
The hot trend in recruiting back in 2013 was programmatic ad technology. At Radancy, we have been leveraging AI and automation, operating in the background of our ad tech solution, to seamlessly streamline a critical step in the recruiter journey: getting the right eyes on the right opportunities. This technology takes the guesswork out of ad placement, using data-driven algorithms to automate the distribution of your media dollars so that your job listings and employer brand ads can show up not only where your talent works, where they play.
Early AI and automation solutions were focused on improving the recruiter journey. By 2016, AI moved from backstage to the front of house, ushering in the age of chatbots in talent acquisition (TA) and promising to revolutionize the candidate experience. For those of us who had a front row seat to this experience, the early days didn’t feel as advanced as the hype. A chatbot’s grasp of human conversation left a lot to be desired. But as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) evolves, chatbots have become more adept at routine tasks such as resume parsing and answering repeat FAQs that often flood recruiters’ inboxes.
From optimizing ad placements to leveraging chatbots, AI and automation in talent acquisition tech have been focused on making life easier for both recruiters and candidates – improving the user experience to make the hiring process smoother for everyone. But something’s shifted.
From Process Optimization to Worker Productivity
Fast forward to today: Generative AI (Gen AI) in the world of work is focused on enhancing worker productivity. Earlier tools were aimed at efficiency (saving money on ad placement) and effectiveness (finding qualified candidates), with the goal of optimizing the process, not the people themselves. We have been using AI to make things run more smoothly. Refocused on productivity, AI and people as collaborators can create recruiter and candidate experiences beyond what exists today.
A Holistic Approach to AI Integration
AI solutions in the talent acquisition market have focused on fixing one piece of the total talent journey. But there could be a greater opportunity for transformation. Taking a people-centric approach and leveraging Gen AI could result in a more comprehensive solution to improve total talent acquisition experience for everyone involved.
You may have heard of Design Thinking and Systems Thinking methodologies. While they differ in approach – Design Thinking focuses on empathetically understanding human needs and Systems Thinking on analyzing systemic interactions – both can guide the strategic deployment of Gen AI to achieve transformative results.
Design Thinking is all about understanding the complex and ever-changing needs of the people involved. In talent acquisition, this means focusing on both the needs of recruiters (e.g., the need for expertise aligned with more technical roles) and the needs of candidates (e.g., deeper understanding of the dynamics of the team they may join).
Systems Thinking looks at the entire organization as a complex system with all its interconnected parts. Leveraged for talent acquisition, this means evaluating the recruiter’s and the candidate’s journeys (the total talent acquisition experience) – all the interrelated teams, touchpoints and, technology – from initial engagement with your organization’s employer brand to final decision to accept an offer.
These methodologies used together can be a superpower for problem solving, surfacing an approach to leveraging AI that is not just about automating a single task – it’s about understanding interdependencies and finding hidden opportunities where AI can truly transform the total talent acquisition experiences for both the recruiter and the candidate.
Mapping the Recruiter Workflow
Applying design and systems thinking to the talent acquisition journey starts with a deep dive into the entire recruiter workflow, from the moment a job opens to the moment it’s filled, mapping every step, every connection point with other teams, every candidates engagement point, every challenging task and every piece of technology currently in use – the ones that smooth the process and those that create friction. In addition, this deep dive should take into account the associated emotion at each step. This process can help identify key areas that require human judgement and emotional intelligence – a critical step in mapping out core functions for the people part of the AI + people equation.
The WINS Framework: Identifying Gen AI’s Strengths
With an understanding of where people excel, the next step is to gain a deeper understanding of what Gen AI does best as a technology, its capabilities. Gen AI excels at Words, Images, Numbers and Sounds (WINS). The WINS framework applied to recruitment could touch on any number of elements of the talent acquisition process, from summarizing candidate interviews to developing images aligned with your employer brand, compiling predictive workforce analytics or developing customized music for employer brand videos. Evaluating a user journey using the WINS framework is a helpful process to determine how best people and AI can collaborate for a greater outcome.
Human-AI Collaboration: Building a Dream Team
Implementing this approach equips recruiters to focus on the parts of their work that require a human touch – the judgment calls, the emotional intelligence, the stuff that makes their job rewarding – while envisioning how Gen AI can be used to handle the aspects that are more computationally driven.
Think of it like this: recruiters are the seasoned experts, incredible at finding great candidates, building rapport and connections and positioning the value of joining your organization. Gen AI, on the other hand, is great at handling the tedious and often repetitive tasks – résumé parsing, scheduling, sending reminders, etc.
Organizations adopting a well-organized holistic approach to AI in talent acquisition are building a dream team: Human expertise plus AI muscle.
Rethinking Talent Engagement: The Path Forward
The reality is that we’re in a market that is very cautious, and rightly so, about how and at what point in the process to inject this new technology. While this may lead some leaders to think they’re behind, the reality is that most organizations are already using some sort of AI or automation. This technology is embedded into many of the enterprise tools and platforms you already use. So, this is the moment to lead in a different way, by carefully examining the opportunity and taking a responsible approach to developing an AI strategy that suits your organization, people and processes.
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